You may have driven past this imposing Victorian house, once the rectory for Roughton, near Cromer, and never even known it's there. Property editor Caroline Culot looked around the village's best kept secret.
Hidden behind trees and down a drive with electronically operated gates, the village's former rectory, built in 1867, stands majestic in its two acres of grounds. From the exterior, it looks hardly any different from generations ago. Interestingly, two black and white vintage picture postcards exist online of the house, titled in white ink; 'Roughton Rectory, near Cromer,' and it looks almost exactly the same.
This is a classic Victorian house of substance with a bay window marking the architectural move away from the earlier Georgian style giving reception rooms the added room and light of a bay. The current owner still has the old architect's drawings of the house - beautifully drawn and signed in ink by a John Dolphin. There are many throwbacks to when it was a rectory too - in the hall is a fireplace next to which the clergyman's parishioners would sit and wait to see him, but kept warm, and the current study is where the rector would have seen them, and this also boasts a good sized fireplace, to keep him warm.
The current owners with young children bought the house about 3.5 years ago and had many grand plans for it - but life got in the way and as a result, there are many ways of taking the house on for the future. Inside, a beautiful new kitchen has been put in with elegant teal blue units and there is potential for more cosmetic improvement inside and to develop the detached coach house and outbuildings which are ideal, subject to planning, for all kinds of uses from converting for office use or as an annexe, holiday let or for a relative or teenager.
However, it must be said that what you have is a very beautiful period house with everything we love about such properties - working sash shutters, some of which are full length, some which fold back, others which fold down with their mechanism allowing them to disappear from view neatly for storage. You have some big fireplaces, some of them marble, and an ornate plasterwork ceiling in the drawing room. What the Victorians did so well was to build houses with rooms of ample proportions - you have seven good sized bedrooms, for example.
Downstairs, off a long hall, you have three principal receptions, all facing south. The other important benefit is privacy; this house is in a secluded setting totalling two acres despite being on the edge of a village and backs onto fields with some lovely walks close by.
This is a fabulous family home; it needs children and dogs! Both have enough room to run around inside and out. This is not a project, this is a much loved family home but with potential to make it even more adorable.
Roughton Lodge is for sale with Strutt & Parker who can be contacted on 01603 617431.
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